Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (144 page)

“I didn’t yelp.”

“I know a good yelp when I hear one.”

I was shivering and poked at the fire and threw on another log.

“What was it about?” he said.

“What was what about?”

“Your nightmare.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was in an alley. Somewhere in New York, I think. There was a car. Someone was standing in the shadows.”

“Sounds terrifying,” he said, sounding a little sarcastic.

I guess I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t explaining it right.

I closed my eyes, trying to shake the troubling feeling the dream had left. There was something about that car. And then I remembered what Charlie Modine had said about his dream. He had mentioned the make and model of the car that had killed his wife.

In a way, that made me feel better. I could write off that part of the dream to the power of suggestion.

“You know what I think, Abby Craig?”

“What, David Norton?”

“I think it’s good I live with you. I’m making drinks. We need to lighten up the mood in here.” He moved his hand in a sweeping motion, snapping his fingers. “Pronto.”

Since David had moved in, my alcohol consumption had doubled. At least doubled. It was time to dial it back a little.

“No, I can’t tonight,” I said. “I’ve got an early morning.”

“Relax and please take those panties out of that bunch before you hurt yourself! I’m only talking about hot chocolate. It’ll warm you up and keep you up a little longer. I don’t want you to go to bed just yet. I have some fun news and I rushed home early just to tell you!”

“Hey, how was your date with Liam? Did you have a good time?”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“Is the Pope from Argentina? One marshmallow or two?”

“No marshmallows. Ever.”

“You got it,” he said. “Meanwhile find your way to the little girl’s room and see what you can do about your hair. It looks like a separate life form, all akimbo and hashtag
Thing from Another World
. Sheesh is all I can say, Abby Craig.”

I yawned and lingered by the fire for another moment before heading to the bathroom to splash my face with water. I looked in the mirror and shuddered. David had a point. My hair was wacky, knotted up in the back and sticking out at 45-degree angles.

He was probably right about the yelping, too.

I pushed it around a little before giving up. It was no use. My hair had a mind of its own. I headed back out and found David, waiting for me, a mug in each hand.

“Drink up,” he said, handing me a cup.

“Hey, this is pretty good.”

I took another sip and sat in the rocking chair, pulling it up to the edge of the fireplace and letting the warmth of the drink slide down my throat. Within a few minutes, I felt better.

I had almost forgotten.

“So what’s your big news?” I asked.

“Well, it’s about that mob role. I’ve got an audition, Abby Craig! And it’s not a cattle call. I was invited. Only four people are up for it now. One of the producers of the show actually called my agent, not the other way around. That’s gotta mean I have a real shot at it.”

David was grinning Black Dahlia-style, his eyes dancing.

“Yes!” I said, holding out a fist. “I knew it was just a matter of time.”

“Well, yeah, silly. It’s always just a matter of time. One way or the other. But I didn’t have a hundred years in me.”

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’m flying out first thing. They’re putting me up at the Biltmore. How cool is that?”

“That is way cool,” I said. “Do you need a ride to the airport?”

“No, I got it, but thanks.”

“So it’s for that same gangster that you’ve been practicing?”

“That would be the one, sweetheart.”

“Just make sure you know how to whistle, Steve.”

It was the worst Lauren Bacall ever and sent David into one of his trademark wheezing fits.

“You know, I’ve never been to Hollywood,” I said. “I wish I could tag along.”

“Well, if I land the role, there will be plenty of time for…”

He didn’t finish.

“For what?” I said after a minute.

“I was going to say there’ll be plenty of time for you to visit, but TV being what it is, well, let’s make sure you come out that first day.”

“I’m there like smog.”

CHAPTER 20

I was glad to have the day behind me.

It started with an early morning shift at Back Street, followed by a block of classes, and then my new professional carrot chopping job. My back ached, along with my feet, and my fingers were cut up almost as bad as the carrots from my brain going faster than my hands.

The sun had just fallen behind the mountains as I pulled out of the lot. I turned up the heat and navigated slowly into the roundabout, which was crusted over with ice on top of more ice.

I stepped into the house. It was dark and quiet and cold. I walked through all the rooms, turning on lamps and hitting switches, and checking the closets and under the beds. It had become a new habit. Ever since Kate moved out, even when David was home. I did it once when I got home and then again before going to bed.

I picked up the mail that was scattered on the floor and separated the bills from the junk without opening any of the envelopes.

I was still learning about living on my own. The house was paid for and my student loan covered most of my tuition, so those were big pluses. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have expenses. Last month’s gas bill was like a kick to the gut, five times what it had been at the beginning of fall, and I was giving serious thought to scaling back my satellite TV package to something more basic.

So far I was making ends meet without Kate, but I had originally hoped to reduce my hours at Back Street while in school and that just wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I would have to make it work if I didn’t want to be completely broke all the time. Besides his company, I was glad to have David’s rent money coming in. 

I thought about lighting a fire, but I was too tired. Instead I sat there in the cold and opened my laptop.

It was time.

Time to find out everything I could about Sarah Modine’s death.

***

It was easy to find information on the incident and the Modines. In fact, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of stories about what had happened. It was big news at the time.

Sarah Modine had long dark hair, the bangs hanging just above her eyes. She didn’t look like a lawyer. More like a model. Her lips were full and cheek bones high and she stared at the camera like she knew something, something that she was going to keep to herself.

Charles and Sarah Modine leased a penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Mr. Modine was a partner at a big advertising firm. Mrs. Modine worked in the DA’s office for almost a decade and had quickly risen through the ranks. At the time of her death, she was one of the city’s top prosecutors, handling several high profile cases.

The facts of her death backed up Modine’s account.

Sarah Modine was out running early one morning when she was struck by a car. The driver fled. She died instantly. Two of the witnesses thought it was an accident. But the third one disagreed.

“There was no one else on the street at that time. The driver crossed into the opposite lane and then onto the sidewalk. This was no accident. He took her out. Deliberately. It was out and out cold-blooded murder, is what it was.”

The police seemed to keep an open mind, interviewing several ex-cons who Sarah Modine had prosecuted. They followed up on all death threats she had received and talked to associates and family members of people Sarah Modine had come across who were currently serving time and might have held a grudge.

I clicked on some of the news videos.

The initial TV coverage showed footage captured from a traffic camera, which the police had released to the press in hopes of getting the public’s help in finding the car. The anchorman warned that “What you are about to see is graphic in nature.”

The blurry video showed the accident from a distance, at normal speed and then several times in slow motion. It was all there. The car leaving its lane and jumping up on the sidewalk. The impact. The body flying through the air. The dark pool forming on the pavement.

I remembered my dream. It was the same car I had seen in the alley. It was true that Charles Modine had said it was a GTO, but before the dream I wouldn’t have known the difference between a GTO and a Lamborghini. But here I was staring at one.

“Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the driver of the car,” the anchorman said.

I went back to some of the earlier photos.

Sarah Modine reminded me a little of a younger Cat Power, back before she cut her hair and went with the platinum pixie.
Good Woman
started playing in my head, Eddie Vedder singing backup, the song’s sadness mixing with my own and forming a lump in my throat.

“Damn it,” I whispered.

After a minute, I forced myself to watch it again. And again.

It was impossible to gauge the driver’s intent. I could see it both ways, as an accident and then as something more malevolent. It was the type of thing where people could almost see what they wanted to see.

It was also impossible to see the driver. He was just a shadow in the dark behind the tinted glass.

I started reading the accounts again.

The car that killed Sarah Modine had been reported stolen earlier in the week. It was found later that same day in an alley less than five miles from where she was hit. Blood on the vehicle matched the victim’s, but no evidence was found that could help police identify the driver. No gum wrappers, no cigarette butts, no DNA, no fingerprints.

The months went by and investigators turned up nothing. There were no leads, no witnesses coming forward with new information, no trace of the man behind the wheel.

Media interest faded and at one point a few of the tabloids ran stories suggesting that the police were looking into Charles Modine as a person of interest. Sarah Modine had taken out a sizeable life insurance policy years earlier, naming her husband as the sole beneficiary. But police quickly denied that they suspected Charles Modine of any wrongdoing.

“The husband is the first place we look at in cases where the wife dies under suspicious circumstances,” an NYPD captain stated. “And that’s exactly what we did in this case. But Mr. Modine came up clean. His alibi checked out. From all indications, theirs was a very happy marriage. And he certainly was not hurting for money, which shoots a big hole in those murder-for-profit theories currently making the rounds in the scandal sheets. Contrary to some of what’s been printed, Charles Modine is not presently and has never been a person of interest in this case.”

Almost a year after the incident the lead investigator issued a statement.

“From the beginning, the evidence pointed to manslaughter hit-and-run as a very real possibility in this case. The car swerved suspiciously but, really, it could have been anything. A drunk driver. Someone on the phone. Someone eating. A senior citizen losing control of the wheel. Someone who fell asleep for a second. Hell, a bee could have flown in the car, distracting the driver for one terrible moment.

“We will not stop looking for this individual, but at this time it appears more and more like this crime was not a premeditated act.”

After that, Charles Modine, who had refused to talk to the press up until then, put out his own theory of what happened to his wife.

“They killed her,” he said in an exclusive interview with the
New York Daily News
. “The Church, the DA, the mayor. They all killed her. And now the cops are covering it up.”

It made headlines for a few days but it seemed no one took his claims as anything other than the ravings of a grieving widower.

Interest died out and the stories dried up.

But the Modine saga had one more chapter.

I found the story a few minutes later.

About what happened to Charles Modine.

After.

After his wife’s murder. After her case went cold.

I closed my laptop and bit my lip, wondering why.

Why had Charles Modine lied to me about his own death?

CHAPTER 21

I started working on the fire, but my attention wasn’t on the kindling or the promise of warmth. It was on Charlie Modine.

On March 15, the one-year anniversary of her death, Charlie Modine hanged himself.

I threw in some more scraps of newspaper. They danced for a minute but the wood, aloof and disinterested, refused to join in. I was no Cody Lundin.

I heard the doorbell and stood up out of my catcher’s crouch. I was surprised to see Ty’s truck out front.

“Hey, Babe,” he said when I opened the door.

“Hey, I didn’t think you were getting off for a few more hours.”

He smiled as he took off his jacket, hung it up, and stared at all the cold smoke in the fireplace.

“Emergency house call. The ghost of Jim Morrison dropped by and told me you were having trouble,” he said, taking the poker from my hand. “I’ve come to light your fire.”

“And just in time, too. I’m freezing. Hey, did you eat? I could whip something up.”

“Yeah, that’d be good. How about breakfast for dinner again?”

We had been doing that a lot lately, feasting on eggs over easy, hash browns, and buttered toast with fig jam at night. I headed to the kitchen and got to work, using sweet potatoes for a little variety. Thirty minutes later we were at the table, sitting down to a perfect winter meal.

When we finished, I stood for a while admiring the roaring fire. I pulled up the chairs close to the flames and handed Ty a beer.

He rocked back and forth and I started smiling.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just something David said the other day,” I said.

“Please do share.”

“He says that between the rocking chairs, the fleece blankets, and my late night tea habit, it feels like he’s moved into a retirement home.”